Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of "Casablanca" - Bogart, Bergman, and World War II

Description

"In late 1941, a play called Everybody Comes to Rick's made its way from the desk of Warner script reader Stephen Karnot to the office of producer Hal Wallis, who bought it for $20,000. Less than three years later, Casablanca had earned Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, and it had become a favorite of moviegoers around the world. But, as Aljean Harmetz shows, no one expected Casablanca to be anything more than a standard World War II romantic suspense film--until it was finished. What turned Casablanca into an exceptional movie? In Round Up the Usual Suspects, Harmetz has written the inside story of the making of Casablanca. Drawing upon years of research and interviews with many of those close to the film, including the late Paul Henreid, Lauren Bacall, and scriptwriters Howard Koch and Julius Epstein; Ingrid Bergman's acting diaries; and the vast Warner Bros. archives, Harmetz goes behind the scenes to convey the precise realities of working under the Hollywood studio system during World War II. Full of surprises, the book debunks many cherished myths about the casting, script, story, and legendary stars of the film. Round Up the Usual Suspects brings to life the personalities and politics at the studio: Jack Warner's rivalry with his top producer Hal Wallis; the off-camera coolness between Bogart and Bergman--she said, "I kissed him but I never knew him"; the casting possibilities, which included George Raft, Hedy Lamarr, Lena Horne, Ann Sheridan and Michele Morgan; the jealousy of Bogart's hard-drinking wife Mayo Methot; the tantrums of director Michael Curtiz, who treated Bergman with elaborate European courtesy but lashed out at others; the friendship between Bogart and Claude Rains. Harmetz enriches the book with illuminating insights into the workings of the Hollywood studio system--far from being glamorous, it often seemed like a factory assembly line--and with a penetrating analysis of the effects of World War II on the studios and the government's use of the movies as a weapon of war. Jack and Harry Warner and those who worked for them sold the war as much as they were selling their pictures, and the actors who played refugees in wartime Morocco were as often as not actual refugees from Hitler's tyranny. Not only was there the war to consider; there was also the censorship machine, which attempted to play down certain aspects of Casablanca, particularly the potentially scandalous love affair between Bogart's Rick and Bergman's Ilsa. Richly detailed, compelling as a suspense novel, illustrated throughout with rare photographs and documents, Round Up the Usual Suspects is a magnificent examination of the forces and people that came together--either because of or in spite of the studio system--to create a masterpiece. Veteran Casablanca addicts, newcomers to the film, and those who love reading about behind-the-scenes Hollywood will be dazzled by Aljean Harmetz's fresh insights into the people and period of the quintessential movie-lover's movie, which has endured for fifty years and shows no signs of stopping."--Dust jacket.

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  Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Making of "Casablanca" -...

  • 1992-11-26
  • 402 pages
  • Paperback
  • Hyperion